girl imprisoned for not doing homework

Teen sent to juvenile detention for not completing homework speaks on ‘injustice’

“There are thousands of other Graces out there," the teen's mother said.

A Michigan mother and her teen daughter, who spent 78 days in juvenile detention after a judge ruled that she'd violated probation by not completing her homework, are speaking out about their experience, which they say was an injustice in the criminal justice system.

Wishing to be identified only as Grace -- her middle name -- the now-16-year-old, who is Black and has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, had struggled to keep up with the transition to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic last year. She was placed on "intensive probation" in April 2020 after being charged with assault for fighting with her mother and larceny for stealing a schoolmate's cellphone after her mother took hers away.

Grace, who lives in suburbs outside of Detroit, said that she knew there would be consequences for those actions, but she didn't realize they would rise to such a level, and that she thinks they did because she's Black.

"If a white girl were to steal the phone and she has the same history as me, same background, same everything ... they would probably look at her and say, 'Hey, you know, you're not brought up like this,'" Grace told ABC News' Linsey Davis. "But for me, I feel like it was more of an 'OK, this is what we expect from Black people.'"

Charisse, Grace's mother who also asked to use her middle name, called her daughter's incarceration an "injustice" that should "not be forgotten ... that should never occur again."

"My daughter was penalized because of having a learning disability, which is her chronic ADHD," Charisse told ABC News.

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Among the terms of her probation was a requirement that Grace complete all of her schoolwork on time. But she said the transition to virtual learning made her feel overwhelmed and anxious. She was matched with a caseworker who Charisse said she thought would help Grace get the support services she needed.

"When we first met, she had shared with us that one of her roles would be to help us through any issues, to keep my daughter on the straight and narrow," Charisse said. Instead "I got a violation," she said.

Within days of hearing Grace might have been behind on her schoolwork, the caseworker referred her to the court, recommending that she be placed in juvenile detention, according to ProPublica , which first reported the case. The Oakland County Family Court Division did not respond to ABC News' request for comment.

On May 14, Grace was subsequently brought before Oakland County family court Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, who at one point during the hearing said Grace was "a threat to the community." She ordered Grace to be taken into custody and sent to a county detention center named Children's Village. Her decision came after Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's coronavirus-related order to keep juveniles out of detention unless they posed "a substantial and immediate safety risk to others."

"If we called every person who's taken something or a person who's [gotten into] an argument with their mom ... I'm pretty sure everybody would be ... a threat to the community," Grace said.

Jonathan Biernat, one of Grace's lawyers, said that in the handling of her case, the court never got "any testimony from the school or the teacher -- anybody involved with her education. They got testimony from the probation officer, the prosecutor. And the judge made her decision based on that testimony."

MORE: Judge: Teen jailed over homework released from probation

Reporter Jodi Cohen, who investigated Grace's case for ProPublica, told ABC News that 42% of youth referred to the court in the county where Grace lives are Black despite Black youth making up only 15% of the county's population.

"Cases like Grace's, and others where you see young people of color … disproportionately represented at various contact points, to me, that points out systemic failures long before the court involvement started," said Jason Smith, executive director of the Michigan Center for Youth Justice. "We wouldn't be talking about disparity rates at the confinement level if there was more support in the community. ... we wouldn't rely on the justice system to address a lot of these issues that shouldn't be criminalized in the first place."

PHOTO: Ashleigh Givens joins an overnight occupation to free "Grace" a 15-year-old Black teen who was detained to the juvenile detention facility for breaking her probation by not doing her online school work, Pontiac, Mich., July 29, 2020.

Charisse said she's still haunted by the memories of her daughter being handcuffed and taken into custody.

"I was devastated. It just didn't make any sense and I became very angry. I was furious," she said.

Grace still holds on to all the letters of support that she received during her time in juvenile detention, but she said one still stands out for her: The first one she sent to her mother from inside.

"Dear mommy, I miss you a lot, and being here is hard. I haven't really wrote you because I had to ask God to give me strength to do so. I couldn't write without crying or feeling bad for the rest of the day. ... Please continue to send me pictures of me and you or just with anyone. I love you, mommy, and I miss you," the letter reads in part.

MORE: 6 former youth detention center employees arrested on sexual assault charges

Cohen said that she received a call from Charisse in May 2020. After Charisse told her about Grace's situation, "it didn't sound right," Cohen said.

"Most lawyers who looked at the case didn't think it was possible to get her out of the detention center," Biernat said. "It would be too difficult to convince the judge to change your mind."

Salma Khalil, another of Grace's lawyers, added that "these cases are long, they're drawn out, they're complicated [and] they require a lot of resources."

ProPublica published Grace's story in mid-July 2020 and it quickly sparked widespread outcry -- far more attention than Charisse had expected, she said.

"We immediately started to receive phone calls from all over the country. We got calls from senators, we got calls from legislators in [Washington], D.C. It was amazing," Biernat said.

Cohen said she didn't expect her article to trigger a social media movement calling to free Grace. High school students slept outside, near the facility in protest of Grace's incarceration. A petition for her release garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures. And a grassroots organization led a 100-car caravan from Grace's school to the detention center.

Less than a week after the ProPublica article, as pressure to revisit Grace's case mounted, Brennan agreed to a hearing on a motion to release her from detention. During the hearing, Brennan recounted Grace's history of encounters with law enforcement, which go back to when she was a preteen, Cohen said, adding that Brennan used the hearing to make her point of view on the case public.

Meanwhile, Grace pleaded with the judge for her release, saying, "Each day, I try to be a better person than I was the last, and I've been doing that even before I was in this situation. I'm getting behind in my actual school while here [at the detention center]. The schooling here is beneath my level of education."

Brennan ultimately decided that Grace belonged in juvenile detention and denied her release. Khalil said that, at the hearing, Grace and Charisse hugged in what she described as a "heartbreaking moment."

"I think people need to remember that Grace and her mom have a very close bond," Khalil said. "Charisse raised Grace with her own hands. She's an involved mom, so the trauma that they are both experiencing and being separated from one another … it just breaks your heart that our system did that to them."

PHOTO: Grace and Charisse react after being denied early release during hearing in front of judge Mary Ellen Brennan, July 20, 2020, at Oakland County Court in Pontiac, Mich.

Biernat, however, said they "weren't going to sleep" until she'd been let go, and filed a petition with the Michigan Court of Appeals. It worked. Eleven days after the hearing, the appeals court ordered Grace to be released immediately.

Now, nearly a year after her experience, Grace is an honors student who enjoys taking pictures during her free time. She's also started to speak out about her experience, which has begun to catalyze change in the state. In June, Whitmer signed an executive order to create a task force on juvenile justice reform.

MORE: More than 30,000 children under age 10 have been arrested in the US since 2013: FBI

One of the goals of Whitmer's task force is to collect statewide data on the juvenile justice system's influence on youth who enter it, including how many youth within the justice system -- regardless of their race -- are there due to school discipline or academic issues. Smith said these numbers are currently "unknown."

"There are thousands of other Graces out there and we need to pay attention to those children," Charisse said. "Our Black girls are being criminalized. My child was criminalized because of her behavior and her ADHD, but Black girls are being criminalized just because of who they are."

Attorney Allison Folmar, a longtime family friend who is now representing them, told ABC News they are now planning to file a due process complaint against the school district where Children's Village is located, alleging that Grace was denied her right to adjust to remote learning as a student with ADHD.

"The Individuals with Disabilities [in Education] Act exists because you have to prohibit the very injustice that occurred in this case," Folmar said. "This federal act empowers students who are differently abled to learn in accordance with his or her individual ability and progress. Students cannot be forced into mainstream academic practice that leaves them at an educational disadvantage."

She went on, "So, this is about making sure that the educational system does not leave another child behind and … say we're speaking of this case, to criminalize the inability to learn in this type of situation."

While she noted that Grace is "still trying to recover academically" after her time in juvenile detention, Folmar also said that Grace "excels" when given "all of the necessary tools to thrive" and pointed to her becoming an honors student.

PHOTO: The honorable Mary Ellen Brennan addresses the court during an early release hearing for Grace, July 20, 2020, at Oakland County Court in Pontiac, Mich.

"We are simply trying to make her whole," Folmar said.

Since her learning plan had been disrupted by her incarceration, Folmar said they're now seeking compensation in the civil case to pay for the new school she's attending as well as the services she needs to succeed academically.

MORE: Hundreds claim decades of abuse by 150 youth center staffers

Grace said that her future plans include going to college and starting a computer information or cybersecurity business. She also said she wants to continue to advocate for others.

When asked if there was anything she would say to Brennan, Grace said she would tell her, "I'm not just what was on the papers. I'm not just what you saw from those reports or what you saw in those files. I have so many different attributes and I'm so different than just that, and I hope that she doesn't judge everyone based on just that."

ABC News' Gabriella Abdul-Hakim contributed to this report.

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Series: Grace

A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.

A 15-year-old in Michigan was incarcerated during the coronavirus pandemic after a judge ruled that not completing her schoolwork violated her probation. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said the girl’s mother.

by Jodi S. Cohen

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This story was co-published with the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Magazine.

PONTIAC, Mich. — One afternoon in mid-June, Charisse* drove up to the checkpoint at the Children’s Village juvenile detention center in suburban Detroit, desperate to be near her daughter. It had been a month since she had last seen her, when a judge found the girl had violated probation and sent her to the facility during the pandemic.

The girl, Grace, hadn’t broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn’t in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place.

She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills switched to remote learning.

Because of the confidentiality of juvenile court cases, it’s impossible to determine how unusual Grace’s situation is. But attorneys and advocates in Michigan and elsewhere say they are unaware of any other case involving the detention of a child for failing to meet academic requirements after schools closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

The decision, they say, flies in the face of recommendations from the legal and education communities that have urged leniency and a prioritization of children’s health and safety amid the crisis. The case may also reflect, some experts and Grace’s mother believe, systemic racial bias. Grace is Black in a predominantly white community and in a county where a disproportionate percentage of Black youth are involved with the juvenile justice system.

Across the country, teachers, parents and students have struggled with the upheaval caused by monthslong school closures. School districts have documented tens of thousands of students who failed to log in or complete their schoolwork: 15,000 high school students in Los Angeles , one-third of the students in Minneapolis Public Schools and about a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students .

Students with special needs are especially vulnerable without the face-to-face guidance from teachers, social workers and others. Grace, who has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed. Without much live instruction or structure, she got easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said.

“Who can even be a good student right now?” said Ricky Watson Jr., executive director of the National Juvenile Justice Network. “Unless there is an urgent need, I don’t understand why you would be sending a kid to any facility right now and taking them away from their families with all that we are dealing with right now.”

In many places, juvenile courts have attempted to keep children out of detention except in the most serious cases, and they have worked to release those who were already there, experts say. A survey of juvenile justice agencies in 30 states found that the number of youths in secure detention fell by 24% in March, largely due to a steep decline in placements.

In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order in March that temporarily suspended the confinement of juveniles who violate probation unless directed by a court order and encouraged eliminating any form of detention or residential placement unless a young person posed a “substantial and immediate safety risk to others.” Acting on Whitmer’s order, which was extended until late May, the Michigan Supreme Court told juvenile court judges to determine which juveniles could be returned home.

Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, the presiding judge of the Oakland County Family Court Division, declined through a court administrator to comment on Grace’s case. In her ruling, she found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the assault and theft charges that led to her probation.

“She hasn’t fulfilled the expectation with regard to school performance,” Brennan said as she sentenced Grace. “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter, to the order, of the probation.”

That June afternoon, a month after the sentencing, Charisse left Children’s Village without seeing Grace, but she did pick up a shopping bag of clothes and toiletries she had delivered days earlier. She said officials had rejected them because they violated facility rules: underwear that wasn’t briefs; face wipes that contained alcohol; a pair of jeans deemed too tight.

Charisse counts each day they’re apart, and that was day No. 33. Another month has since passed, and there could still be months to go before they are at home together again.

Driving home, Charisse had to pull over soon after she turned onto the road leading away from the complex. She sat in a parking lot, sobbing.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She shook her head as tears dampened the disposable blue face mask pulled down to her chin.

“Every day I go to bed thinking, and wake up thinking, ‘How is this a better situation for her?’”

It has always been just the two of them, Charisse and Grace.

Told by doctors that she would be unable to have children, Charisse, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, was shocked when she became pregnant at 44. She has raised Grace on her own after the girl’s father did not want to be involved, she said.

They did everything together: winter sports throughout Michigan, rounds of golf, going to the opera, singing to Tony Bennett on road trips. They even appeared in a “Pure Michigan” tourism ad. As a child, Grace wanted so much to be like her mother that she asked to be called Charisse No. 2.

When Grace hit her preteen years, however, their relationship became rocky. They argued about Grace keeping her room clean and doing schoolwork and regularly battled over her use of the phone, social media and other technology.

By the time Grace turned 13, the arguments had escalated to the point that Charisse turned to the police for help several times when Grace yelled at or pushed her. She said she didn’t know about other social services to call instead. In one incident, they argued over Grace taking her mother’s iPhone charger; when police arrived, they discovered she had taken an iPad from her middle school without permission. At her mother’s request, Grace entered a court diversion program in 2018 for “incorrigibility” and agreed to participate in counseling and not use electronic devices. She was released from the program early, her mother said.

While there was periodic family conflict, Grace has always had strong friendships and is active in her school and community, her mother said. She has helped run programs at church, played saxophone in the school band and composed music, and regularly participated in service projects.

The incident that led to her current situation happened Nov. 6, when someone called the police after hearing Charisse crying “Help me!” and honking her car’s horn. Grace, upset she couldn’t go to a friend’s house, had reached inside the car to try to get her mother’s phone and had bitten her mother’s finger and pulled her hair, according to the police report.

Police released Grace to a family friend to let the two cool down and referred the case to Oakland County court, where an assault charge was filed against her.

Weeks later, she picked up another charge, for larceny, after she was caught on surveillance video stealing another student’s cellphone from a school locker room.

“After I was caught, I felt instant remorse and guilt. I wanted to take back everything I had done,” Grace wrote in a statement to police. She said she had questioned herself even as she took the phone but wanted one after her mother took hers away.

The other student’s mother, who declined to comment for this story, told police she wanted to press charges, although the phone had been returned to her son soon after Grace took it. “My sincere hope is that any punitive action taken in this case be grounded in the goal of providing this student with opportunities for growth, change and future success,” she wrote in a statement to police.

In the months following the two incidents, Grace and her mother participated in individual and family therapy and Grace stayed out of trouble.

Charisse told a court caseworker assigned to the case that other than being irritable and getting “cabin fever” from being shut at home during the pandemic, “nothing significant” had taken place between the mother and daughter. There was no police contact after the November incidents, records show.

The April 21 juvenile court hearing on the larceny and assault charges against Grace was conducted via Zoom since the courts had shut down, with everyone calling in from their homes. Grace connected from her bedroom, her mother from their living room.

It had the familiar awkwardness of many online meetings: dropped audio; a dog barking in the background; participants swivelling in their chairs; the prosecutor losing his connection. (This hearing and others in the case were recorded, and a ProPublica reporter watched them at the Oakland County courthouse last month.)

Ashley Bishop, a youth and family caseworker for the court, told the judge she thought Grace would be best served by getting mental health and anger management treatment in a residential facility. The prosecutor, Justin Chmielewski, said he agreed. Grace’s court-appointed attorney, Elliot Parnes, said little but asked that she be given probation because she had committed no new offenses and because of the risk of COVID-19 in congregate facilities.

Parnes and Bishop declined to comment for this story and Chmielewski did not respond to calls.

Throughout the hearing, Grace took her glasses off to brush away tears and wiped her nose with her sleeve. She shook her head, which the judge later criticized as a sign of disagreement but which Grace told ProPublica signaled her disappointment in her past behavior. She raised her hand a couple times and asked, in a small voice, “Can I just say something please?”

“My mom and I do get into a lot of arguments, but with each one I learn something and try to analyze why it happened,” she said. “My mom and I are working each day to better ourselves and our relationship, and I think that the removal from my home would be an intrusion on our progress.”

Brennan admonished Grace for the fights with her mother, her thefts at school and behaving in a way that required police to come to their home. “Police,” she said. “Most people go through their entire youth without having the cops have to come to their house because they can’t get themselves together.”

But, citing the pandemic, Brennan decided not to remove Grace from her home and instead sentenced her to “intensive probation.” The terms of the probation included a GPS tether, regular check-ins with a court caseworker, counseling, no phone and the use of the school laptop for educational purposes only. Grace also was required to do her schoolwork.

“I hope that she upholds her end of the bargain,” Brennan said at the end of the hearing.

Schools across the country weren’t prepared for the abrupt turn to remote learning. Grace’s school, Groves High School, in one of the most well-regarded districts in the state, was no different.

In mid-March, thinking the closures might last for only a month, the district initially offered optional online activities and then recessed for an already-scheduled weeklong spring break. Soon after, Whitmer announced that schools would end face-to-face instruction for the rest of the year. The Birmingham Public Schools superintendent asked families for patience as schools moved to an online curriculum in mid-April and promised flexibility in their support. Officials said student work would be evaluated as credit/no-credit.

The initial days of remote school coincided with the start of Grace’s probation. Charisse was concerned that her daughter, who was a high school sophomore and had nearly perfect attendance, would have trouble without in-person support from teachers. Grace gets distracted easily and abandons her work, symptoms of her ADHD and a mood disorder, records show. Her Individualized Education Plan, which spelled out the school supports she should receive, required teachers to periodically check in to make sure she was on task and clarify the material, and it allowed her extra time to complete assignments and tests. When remote learning began, she did not get those supports, her mother said.

Days after the court hearing, on April 24, Grace’s new caseworker, Rachel Giroux, made notes in her file that she was doing well: Grace had called to check in at 8:57 a.m.; she reported no issues at home and was getting ready to log in to do her schoolwork.

But by the start of the following week, Grace told Giroux she felt overwhelmed. She had forgotten to plug in her computer and her alarm didn’t go off, so she overslept. She felt anxious about the probation requirements. Charisse, feeling overwhelmed as well, confided in the caseworker that Grace had been staying up late to make food and going on the internet, then sleeping in. She said she was setting up a schedule for Grace and putting a desk in the living room where she could watch her work.

“Worker told mother that child is not going to be perfect and that teenagers aren’t always easy to work with but you have to give them the opportunity to change,” according to the case progress notes. “Child needs time to adjust to this new normal of being on probation and doing work from home.”

Five days later, after calling Charisse and learning that Grace had fallen back to sleep after her morning caseworker check-in, Giroux filed a violation of probation against her for not doing her schoolwork.

Giroux told the prosecutor she planned to ask the judge to detain Grace because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community,” according to the case notes.

Grace has said in court and in answers to questions from ProPublica that she was trying to do what was asked of her. She had checked in with her caseworker every day and complied with the other requirements of intensive probation, including staying at home and obeying all laws. She had told her special education teacher that she needed one-on-one help and began receiving daily tutoring the day after the probation violation was filed.

Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming whether Grace was meeting her academic requirements. She emailed Grace’s teacher three days later, asking, “Is there a certain percentage of a class she is supposed to be completing a day/week?”

Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”

“Let me be clear that this is no one’s fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming,” she wrote. Grace, she wrote, “has a strong desire to do well.” She “is trying to get to the other side of a steep learning curve mountain and we have a plan for her to get there.”

Giroux declined to comment. Tarpeh told a reporter she was not allowed to discuss Grace’s case.

The May 14 hearing to decide whether Grace had violated her probation, and what would happen if she had, took place at the Oakland County courthouse when the Family Division was hearing only “essential emergency matters.”

Grace’s case was the only one heard in person in the courthouse that day.

Crop of a court document describing Grace's sentence.

Grace’s attorney, concerned about his health, participated by Zoom, though he told the judge it was difficult to represent her without being there. He told the judge he decided not to request a postponement because the family was worried she would detain Grace if they waited for a later court date.

The prosecution called Giroux, the caseworker, as its only witness. In response to questions from Grace’s attorney, she acknowledged she did not know what type of educational disabilities Grace had and did not answer a question about what accommodations those disabilities might require. Her assessment that Grace hadn’t done her schoolwork was based on a comment her mother made to her teacher, which Charisse testified she said in a moment of frustration and was untrue.

Grace’s special education teacher, Tarpeh, could have provided more information and planned to testify but had to leave the hearing to teach a class, according to the prosecutor.

Grace and her mother testified that she was handling her schoolwork more responsibly — and that she had permission to turn in her assignments at her own pace, as long as she finished by the end of the semester. And, Charisse said, Grace was behaving and not causing her any physical harm.

The transition to virtual school had been difficult, Grace testified, but she said she was making progress. “I just needed time to adjust to the schedule that my mom had prepared for me,” she said.

Brennan was unconvinced. Grace’s probation, she told her, was “zero tolerance, for lack of a better term.”

She sent her to detention. Grace was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

From March 16, when Michigan courts began limiting operations to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, to June 29, at least 24 delinquency cases involving youth in Oakland County court resulted in placements to juvenile facilities. Of those, more than half involved young people who are Black, like Grace.

Those numbers, obtained by ProPublica from the Oakland County Circuit Court, reflect long-standing racial disparities in the state and county’s juvenile justice system. From January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland court. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black.

A report released last month , which found inadequate legal representation for juveniles in Michigan, noted that research has shown a disproportionate number of youth of color are incarcerated in Michigan overall. Black youth in the state are incarcerated more than four times as often as their white peers, according to an analysis of federal government data by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that addresses racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

“It is clear that kids of color are disproportionately involved and impacted by the system across the board,” said Jason Smith of the nonprofit Michigan Center for Youth Justice, which works to reduce the confinement of youth. “They are more likely to be arrested, less likely to be offered any kind of diversion, more likely to be removed out of the home and placed in some sort of confinement situation.”

In Grace’s case, too, she was sent to a facility at a time when the governor had encouraged courts to send children home.

At the county-run Children’s Village, which has space for 216 youth in secure and residential settings, the population was down to 80 last week, according to the facility manager. There have been no COVID-19 cases in the youth population and four workers have tested positive from contacts outside Children’s Village, she said.

During March and April, 97 juveniles were released from Children’s Village by court order, said Pamela Monville, the Oakland County deputy court administrator. “We understood the orders and the concerns to stop the spread,” she said. Judges, caseworkers and attorneys worked together to determine “who could go back to the community,” she added.

Juvenile justice experts and disability advocates decried the decision to remove Grace from her home, particularly when “the state gave clear directives that children, and all people, unless it was a dire emergency, were to be kept out of detention,” said Kristen Staley, co-director of the Midwest Juvenile Defender Center, which works to improve juvenile defense across eight states.

Terri Gilbert, a former supervisor for juvenile justice programming in Michigan and a high-profile advocate, said the system suffers from inconsistencies in treatment and sentencing, aggravated by a lack of public information.

“This is too harsh of a sentence for a kid who didn’t do their homework. … There is so much research that points to the fact that this is not the right response for this crime,” said Gilbert, a member of a governor-appointed committee that focuses on juvenile justice. “Teenage girls act out. They get mouthy. They get into fights with her mothers. They don’t want to get up until noon. This is normal stuff.”

Monville said Brennan, a judge since 2008, “made the decision she made based on what she heard and her experience on the bench.”

But officials at the Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, the state disabilities watchdog organization, said they were especially troubled that a student with special needs — one of the most vulnerable populations — was punished when students and teachers everywhere couldn’t adjust to online learning.

“It is inconceivable that, given the utterly unprecedented situation, a court would enforce expectations about what student participation in school means that was not tied to the reality of education during a pandemic,” said Kris Keranen, who oversees education for the group.

Charisse says the “greatest pain and devastation” of her life was watching Grace handcuffed in the courtroom. She got a letter in the mail a few days later:

Handwritten letter from Grace to her mother while detained.

“I want to change. I want to be a better person. Here I’ve realized how much you care and love me. I’m sorry I took that for granted. Please continue to send me pictures of me and you or just with anyone. I love you mommy and I miss you.”

On Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the end of slavery, Charisse sat alone at her kitchen table, the wall behind her covered with Grace’s childhood artwork. As the country faced a reckoning over systemic racism, the day had taken on increased recognition and Charisse lamented she and Grace couldn’t mark it together as they usually did, attending programs at church or at the Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Charisse made strawberry lemonade with fresh watermelon, a variation on the traditional red Juneteenth drink, and talked to Grace the only way she could, through a video call monitored by a Children’s Village case coordinator. The longest they had ever been separated before was when Grace attended a leadership sleepaway camp for six weeks over the summer.

“Juneteenth is all about freedom and you can’t even celebrate. What do you have? It has been taken away,” she said to her daughter.

Other than three recent visits, they have seen each other only on screen, including during a court status hearing in early June. On that day, Charisse watched as Grace walked into a room at Children’s Village handcuffed and with her ankles shackled, her mother said.

“For us and our culture, that for me was the knife stuck in my stomach and turning,” Charisse said. “That is our history, being shackled. And she didn’t deserve that.”

At the hearing, both Grace and her mother pleaded with the judge to return her home. “I will be respectful and obedient to my mom and all other people with authority,” Grace said. “I beg for your mercy to return me home to my mom and my responsibilities.”

The judge, however, sided with the caseworker and prosecutor. They agreed that Grace should stay at the Children’s Village not as punishment, but to get treatment and services. She ordered her to remain there and set a hearing to review the case for Sept. 8. By then, it will be a week into the new school year.

On Juneteenth, Charisse and Grace spoke for their full allotted 45 minutes. Grace wore a light blue polo shirt her mother had dropped off a few days earlier. Her hair was pushed back with a Lululemon headband.

Their conversation began with the mundane: Charisse reminded Grace to use her deodorant, and Grace said she needed to get her glasses fixed. But it landed, inevitably, at the frustration they both feel.

“I want you to write in your journal,” Charisse told Grace. She urged her “not to get too comfortable” in detention. “I want you to do what you are supposed to do, but I don’t want you to feel like this is your new norm.”

Grace’s initial weeks in detention were “repetitive and depressing,” she recently told ProPublica in response to written questions.

Grace was required to stay in her locked room from 8:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. She couldn’t turn the lights on and off herself and she slept on a mattress on a concrete slab, she said. She passed the time by reading, drawing and watching some TV.

The local school district provided packets of material but no classes. She said that she has not yet worked with a teacher in person or online, and that she meets less regularly with a therapist at Children’s Village than she did at home.

She has since been transferred to a long-term treatment program at Children’s Village, where she has a bit more freedom. Still, she tells her mother, it’s difficult to think about what she’s missing. “Everyone is moving past me now and I’m just here,” she said during the Zoom call.

A Children’s Village case coordinator, listening, tried to be encouraging. “You are doing very well right now,” she said. “Whatever happens, it looks good. You are respectful, you are following the rules.”

Then she told them their time was up.

“Stay strong,” Grace told her mom.

“You stay strong, too,” her mother replied. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

ProPublica is using middle names for the teenager and her mother to protect their identities.

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Watch CBS News

Michigan judge tells girl detained after not doing homework, "You're exactly where you're supposed to be"

July 22, 2020 / 8:27 AM EDT / CBS News

A Michigan judge, who has been criticized for placing a 15-year-old Black girl in a juvenile facility after she failed to do her schoolwork, denied the girl's request Monday for an early release. The girl, being called Grace to protect her identity, was placed in detention in May.

Not doing her homework was a violation of her probation, stemming from a physical altercation with her mother last fall and for stealing a student's property, as first reported by ProPublica .

Oakland County Judge Mary Ellen Brennan said Grace was a danger to her mother.

"This is not an easy decision to make," Brennan said at the teen's hearing. "How many times does she get to jump her mom before you think that she's a threat of harm to her mom? How many times?"

The defense pointed out that many students struggled with virtual learning especially for students like Grace, who has ADHD and is on a special education plan.

"The struggle of a student experiencing disabilities in time of COVID — it was recognized by the school," said Saima Khalil.

Khalil and Jonathan Biernat represent Grace and told Brennan the teen should be home with her mother.

Grace is doing well in the program she's in right now, according to her caseworker. But, Biernat told CBS News correspondent Adriana Diaz that "the services she can get at home are far superior than the ones provided by Oakland County."

Brennan said Grace's mother repeatedly called a caseworker for help.

"There is no point where my client or the mother was saying, yeah, take my kid away from me and throw her in detention," Khalil said.

In the courtroom, Grace pleaded her case.

"I believe that this challenge has specifically brought my mother and I finally back together," she said.

Brennan told Grace, "You're exactly where you're supposed to be. You're blooming there, but there's more work to be done."

After the hearing, Grace cried and embraced her mother.

Jason Smith, a director with the Michigan Center for Youth Justice, said Grace needs support, not punishment.

"It's frustrating that instead of trying to figure out a way that she can get additional support ... the first step that the judge took was to incarcerate her," Smith said.

The court issued a statement defending the judge's decision saying in part "these decisions do not reflect one event or one bit of information, but rather an extensive review of a juvenile's case file."

Prosecutors have until Friday to respond to a motion from Grace's lawyers to reconsider the probation violation ruling. If Grace has to complete her current program, she'll have to remain in juvenile detention for about three and a half more months.

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Michigan judge denies release of teenage girl who was jailed after not doing homework

A 15-year-old Black girl who has been incarcerated in Michigan since mid-May after she failed to do her online schoolwork won't be returning home, a judge decided Monday, in a case that has stoked outrage that it is emblematic of systemic racism and the criminalization of Black children.

Oakland County Judge Mary Ellen Brennan determined that the girl has been benefiting from a residential treatment program at a juvenile detention center, but is not yet ready to be with her mother. Brennan, the presiding judge of the court's Family Division, scheduled another hearing for September, NBC affiliate WDIV reported.

The girl, who is being identified only by her middle name, Grace, was the subject of a report published last week by ProPublica Illinois , with politicians and community activists expressing outrage over her incarceration.

During a three-hour proceeding, Brennan told Grace that it was in her best interest to stay in the program after all of the progress she had been making.

"Give yourself a chance to follow through and finish something," Brennan said, according to the Detroit News . "The right thing is for you and your mom to be separated for right now."

Grace, however, told the judge that she wanted to go home: "I miss my mom. I can control myself. I can be obedient."

After the hearing, an attorney for the family, Jonathan Biernat, confirmed that Grace had been making strides, but the "fight for her release" is ongoing. He was unavailable for further comment later Monday.

Image: A protester sits on top of a car after a caravan protest in support of a Black Groves High School student, who was jailed due to a probation violation of not keeping up with her online schoolwork,

This past school year, Grace was a sophomore at Groves High School in the Birmingham Public Schools, which is 79 percent white, according to school district data.

Over the past few days, parents and students in suburban Detroit have protested in support of Grace's release from the Children's Village in Oakland County , the detention center where she's been held in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic .

At Monday's hearing, Brennan stressed that police had responded to incidents between the mother and the daughter three times, and that Grace's detainment came out of violating probation related to charges of assault and theft from last year, ProPublica reported .

"She was not detained because she didn't turn her homework in," Brennan said. "She was detained because I found her to be a threat of harm to her mother based on everything I knew."

Brennan also addressed the scrutiny the case has come under.

"My role is to make decisions that are in this young lady's best interest, period," Brennan said. "I took an oath that I would not be swayed by public clamor or fear of criticism."

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., is among those who have questioned whether race was a factor in detaining Grace. Black youth in Michigan are more than four times as likely to be detained or committed than white youth, according to 2015 data analyzed by the nonprofit Sentencing Project .

"If it was a white young person, I really question whether the judge would have done this," Dingell said Monday on MSNBC. "Putting a young person in a confined area in the midst of COVID isn't the answer."

On Thursday, the Michigan Supreme Court said it would review the circumstances surrounding Grace's detainment.

Her case not only touches upon the issue of racial bias within the criminal justice system, but is also entwined with larger concerns over the coronavirus' spread in juvenile detention centers , as well as how children with learning disabilities are being disparately affected during the pandemic as a result of home schooling.

According to ProPublica, Grace has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and receives special education services.

The girl and her mother, identified as Charisse, had bouts of conflict. In 2018, Grace was placed into a court diversion program for "incorrigibility," but was released from it early, Charisse told ProPublica.

In November, an assault charge was filed against Grace after police were called to an incident in which the mother said Grace became violent because she was upset she couldn't go to a friend's house. Weeks later, according to ProPublica, Grace was charged with larceny after she was caught on surveillance video stealing another student's cellphone from a school locker room. The phone was subsequently returned.

A juvenile court hearing was held virtually in April, and a caseworker told the judge that Grace should receive mental health and anger management treatment at a residential facility; the prosecutor agreed. A court-appointed attorney asked for probation for Grace because she had not been in any further trouble since November and because of COVID-19 concerns at detention facilities, ProPublica reported.

"My mom and I are working each day to better ourselves and our relationship, and I think that the removal from my home would be an intrusion on our progress," Grace said at the time, according to ProPublica.

Brennan sentenced Grace to "intensive probation," with several requirements, including staying home, checking in with a caseworker, no phone use and completing her schoolwork. But the girl was unable to focus properly while learning from home, and she told a new caseworker in April that she felt anxious about the probation and overwhelmed.

After her caseworker learned she had fallen back asleep one day and failed to do her homework, a hearing was held in May and the judge decided she had violated the terms of her probation.

ProPublica noted that Grace's teacher had told the caseworker in an email that Grace was "not out of alignment with most of my other students," and how she was coping was "no one's fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming."

Grace was ordered to juvenile detention because she was deemed a "threat to community as original charge was assault and theft," according to court records.

Grace's supporters say the court's decision to incarcerate her simply underscores the racial disparities in even the juvenile system. According to ProPublica, from January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland County Circuit Court. About 42 percent involved Black youth, although the population in the county is about 15 percent.

Tylene Henry, who has a teenage son in the local school district and was among several supporters outside of the courthouse Monday, said she doesn't know Grace, but her situation has "opened up my eyes to the school-to-prison pipeline problem."

Henry said she supports Grace's release and a larger overhaul of the juvenile system.

"There's a lot of students like Grace. They're put into the criminal justice system as children instead of getting the help they really need," she said. "Why does mental health and behavioral health treatment have to come at a cost of being held in a detention center?"

Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.

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Judge Denies Release for 15-Year-Old Detained for Not Doing Homework

It’s truly disheartening how quickly the American judicial system works to lock Black youth up. If you had any skepticism about how efficiently the school-to-prison pipeline works, the case of a 15-year-old girl in Michigan who was sent to juvenile detention for not doing her homework should quickly dispel it. Her case has generated national outrage and protests, and a ruling by a judge on Monday probably isn’t going to change that.

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Sign up for essence newsletters the keep the black women at the forefront of conversation., a teenage girl was jailed for not doing homework, a michigan judge denied her release.

A Teenage Girl Was Jailed For Not Doing Homework, A Michigan Judge Denied Her Release

Back in May, a 15-year-old Black girl was incarcerated in juvenile detention , allegedly for violating her probation for failing to submit online schoolwork.

Now that girl, identified as “Grace,” will remain incarcerated in Michigan after Oakland County Judge Mary Ellen Brennan declined her request for early release and scheduled another hearing for September, according to Click on Detroit.

The Detroit News reports that Grace was on probation for assault and theft charges related to a confrontation with her mother in November.

Brennan framed the separation as being good for the young teen.

“Give yourself a chance to follow through and finish something,” Brennan said. “The right thing is for you and your mom to be separated for right now.”

“She was not detained because she didn’t turn her homework in,” the judge emphasized. “She was detained because she was a threat to her mother.”

Before Brennan handed down her decision, she allowed Grace to speak. The teen said that she wanted to go home, noting, “I can control myself. I can be obedient.”

“I miss my mom,” the 15-year-old added.

Grace’s story drew attention and widespread criticism after ProPublica released a report about her case, particularly due to the criminalization of Black children.

“I miss my mom. I can control myself. I can be obedient,” the 15-year-old known as Grace said during her Monday hearing. Black youth in Michigan are more than four times as likely to be detained or committed than white youth. #mileg https://t.co/0S8GyOVMol — Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 21, 2020

Despite the outrage, Brennan defended her decision.

“My role is to make decisions that are in this young lady’s best interest, period,” she said. “I took an oath that I would not be swayed by public clamor or fear of criticism.”

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Judge denies release of teen girl who was jailed after not doing homework